HUMAN CAPITAL AND HIGHER EDUCATION AS DRIVERS OF ECONOMY IN ALBANIA

Etleva BAJRAMI

Prof. Assoc. Dr., Pedagogue in Finance Department, Faculty of Economy, University of Tirana

etlevabajrami@feut.edu.al

Brikena LEKA

Prof. Assoc. Dr., Pedagogue in Finance Department, Faculty of Economy, University of Tirana

brikenaleka@feut.edu.al

Abstract

Education is a strong pillar for the qualitative growth and improvement of human capital. Appropriate and necessary education of people will enable business employees to have the necessary knowledge for the activity. The growth of businesses will have its impact on the growth of the country’s economy. People are turning to higher education more and more as a way to enhance their personal wellbeing. Higher education is seen by people as the best way to enable the employment and higher salary in the future. For this reason the focus of this paper is education. The main objective is to understand the impact of higher education in economic growth. This paper analyzes the impact of education through several variables on economic growth in Albania, focusing more on the impact of higher education. The independent variables considered in this paper as representatives of education are mean years of schooling, enrollment in primary education, enrollment in secondary education, enrollment in higher education, while as a representative of growth is used dependent variable Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita. From the model we found the variables mean years of schooling and enrollment in higher education are significant and positively related with GDP per capita. The analysis is based on model building with secondary data using the method of least squares.

Keywords: human capital, higher education, school enrollment, GDP per capita

JEL classification: I23, O15, H52

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